It was my first date with my boyfriend Noah and we came here. It was really jammed, and we headed toward the back to the really small room where they have that little couchy thing. There was some sort of birthday party going on, and the room was packed with maybe 30 people, but we squeezed in. Everyone was being super festive, and we started talking to people. They were asking, “How do you know Michelle?” and we were saying, “Oh, we went to school with her,” and they were like, “You went to the University of Michigan?” and we said yeah. They were passing around a journal where people were writing down their personal memories and their best wishes to Michelle. We wrote a page like, “Remember the time when we got drunk at so-and-so’s house–you were so funny.” We wrote all this stuff and then passed the book on. She came up to a group we were talking to, and we said, “Happy birthday, Michelle” and she gave us this “hmmm, I’m not sure who the hell you are” look and we decided to leave quickly. “We’re going to head out now, we’re kinda tired,” Noah said, and everyone was like, “No, no, you can’t leave.” It was hours before we got out of there.
–Liz Ernst, arts administrator